Body Armor is a pickup and gear featured in the Grand Theft Auto series that serves primarily to protect the player's health from specific forms of damage, most notably gunfire. In most cases, body armor in the games is illustrated as a protective blue vest.

Contents

Description

The body armor's primary function is to serve as padding for the player health, in effect extending the player's resilience to damage from gunfire, explosions and fire. The Body armor is a standard-issue item among law enforcement agencies, but also a rare sight among criminals.

Body armor continued to be featured between Grand Theft Auto III and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories, undergoing several more changes. In all of its appearances, armor now offers nearly the same amount of hit points as the player's full health, doubling the player's resistance to damage. The armor hit points stayed the same until Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, where the armor is now a bar instead of hit points. In addition, armor can now pad injuries from falls, collisions with vehicles on foot, and even melee attacks; the armor in GTA San Andreas and GTA Vice City Stories is an exception, providing no protection to the player from falls, while the armor in Grand Theft Auto Advance provides no protection to melee attacks.

In addition to spawning in specific locales, body armor can also be purchased at stores that sell weapons, such as Ammu-Nation, as well as entering the Police/SWATEnforcer trucks. Like the player's health, armor hit points between Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and GTA Vice City Stories (and GTA Advance) can typically be increased easily via side-missions (such as "Vigilante"), as well as 100% completion of the game.

The appearance of armor pickups has also changed significantly after GTA III. When included in GTA III, the pickup assumed the appearance of a shield icon; in games after, however, the pickup is redesigned as a spinning vest, possibly to avoid confusion with the police bribe pickup.

Grand Theft Auto IV

Armor in Grand Theft Auto IV and Episodes from Liberty City has been refashioned slightly out of realism. It no longer offers protection to falls, collisions with vehicles on foot, or melee attacks (including hand-to-hand combat and melee weapons), increasing the player's chances of death from these hazards. However, it may absorb damage when staying inside a broken helicopter on low altitudes (a higher altitude will not be enough to survive).

As expected, armor can be found lying about in specific points of the city (distinguishable by its red glow) as well as underground weapon dealers in GTA IV. Enforcer armored vans still provide the player some armor, but only gives the player roughly one third of the maximum amount.

When equipped, the HUD will represent it as a blue half-circle bar located next to the radar, along with the green health bar. Similarly, when aiming at armored targets, the weapon's reticle will have a smaller, darker circle next to the health bar, usually seen in NOOSE/FIB agents.

Grand Theft Auto V

Grand Theft Auto V introduced a more complex body armor system, including five tiered armor vests ranging from small arms protection to large caliber weapon and explosive protection. Body armor once again provides protection from falls and impacts. Each next level tier provides an added 20% armor, and the player cannot buy the weaker armor after buying the next tier (buy light, cannot buy super light).

This heavy-duty body armor features full-size high tensile strength ballistic plate to the front, rear and sides for maximum protection against large-caliber firearm projectiles and high-explosive shell fragments.

$2,500

$500 (Rank 25)

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Armor suits have been reported to be massively weaker in Grand Theft Auto Online, even at 100%. Probably to compensate for this, players are able to have up to a maximum of ten reserve armor vests (at level 135) in their inventories.

The strength stat, when fully increased does seem to negate this. As it seems the strength stat gives a boost to both armor and health slightly. The armor difference is still very low (around 10-15% depending on the weapon used) but it seems that a super heavy vest (%100), with a character at max strength, can take 2-3 more hits from a carbine rifle or handguns, than a character with a super heavy vest (%100) without a very noticeable strength stat. This is caused by the fact that the strength stat DECREASES overall damage, and not just adds more health. This can be beneficial as it allows much more resilience with armor at range, and thus making armor purchases, and strength enhancing activities a better investment.

Locations

Grand Theft Auto III

On roof of Liberty City Sawmills (near a Micro Uzi). Walk on the low wall near the entrance and jump over the sawmill wall. Then use the pile of sawdust to climb up the rooftop and follow it to the end.

At the Liberty Tree parking lot (where the mission Kingdom Come takes place), in the walled area behind a parked Moonbeam. Use the van to get there, park it by the lowest part of the wall, climb the car, then jump over the wall. It is also a Carbine Rifle location.

Cerveza Heights - On the rooftop of Sum Yung Gai building, inside the large noodle bowl with chopsticks. Can be accessed with the help of a car to access from the emergency stairs on the south side, or by getting into the subway overpass from the Huntington Street LTA station and jump into the rooftop.

Hove Beach - Across from the first safehouse on the billboard. It is really hard to get it, the player have to jump off the Broker - Dukes Expressway to the north to access the rooftops and them carefully jump to the billboard to get it.

Grand Theft Auto Online

Trivia

Grand Theft Auto IV

In the Grand Theft Auto IVbeta, body armor would be physically represented on one's character model if equipped. As with the fingerless gloves that were also 'cut', this wearable armor still exists in the retail version and can be equipped via a trainer, though without any effect unless the in-game armor is equipped as well. However, body armor is now able to be physically shown on characters in Grand Theft Auto Online.

Grand Theft Auto V

The armor depicted on the ground when picking it up does not match its armor value. Say, the armor pick-up on the ground is a super light $500 body armor bought at Ammu-Nation, even though it gives the armor value of a $2,500 super heavy body armor bought at Ammu-Nation.

In GTA V and GTA Online, the super light vest model in Ammu-Nation is actually a plate carrier model, and is used by the military. The model of the in store vest also does not match the actual model used when worn by a character. Its model is still visible when worn by NPCs (professional criminals, and military).